Fragments and contextualisation: from 'gothick' ruins to hypertext
| Prequisites: |
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| Objectives: | As a sequel to the previous lesson on structural irregularity, to study the topic of irregularity in the details: fragments, ruins. Does the hypermedia structure affect this question? |
| Description: | Starting from the 18th c. taste for ruins as a spur for the 'association of ideas', this chapter studies the process of contextualisation down to present-day electronic information spaces. |
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MEDIAEVAL BUILDINGS AND LITERARY ECPHRASES |
| Literary and aesthetic texts commented on the artistic value both of mediaeval buildings and of ruins. | |
- Gothic buildings and the imagination
Gothic buildings, because they were half-concealed in woods, were seen as offering an opening to the imagination
- Ruins and irregular architecture
Ruins and mediaeval buildings became appealing because of their irregularity which 'carries the imagination'
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GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND RUINS, FROM FRAGMENTS TO VIRTUAL CONTEXT |
| A study of ruins as a basis for information structures | |
- The successive representations of gothic buildings from old to new media
Each medium is new in its time (including those that are now 'old media') and offers new opportunities to the practitioners, new ways of relating motif and context
- Fragments and contextualisation
The aesthetics of fragments imply a view of the relation between motif and context, which is the key point in hypermedia, relating cultural memory to the new media